Still Nothing Going On

Really. But people are starting to ask why I haven't been posting and I'm afraid I'll get kicked off Fishsuit's blogroll, so here we are.

The Wee One is upstairs, gritching about having to take a nap. The dog is dozing on the couch, having been up since 4 am (with me—insomnia strikes again). Biggie is at school, having finally gotten over a mysterious fever. The Husband is at job #2 for the day (of three total; yes, he will be cutting down and working a relatively normal amount in a matter of weeks). My work has been slow lately and I have been consumed by utterly normal homemaker-type things: processing endless piles of laundry, tending the postage stamp-sized garden and learning the ins and outs of composting, identifying the species of turtle I found in the road and took in overnight before releasing her back into the depths of Cayuga (Eastern Painted Turtle, Chrysemys picta picta). The Excite-O-Meter is definitely reading LOW, ladies and gentlemen.

But it's bordering on summer in Ithaca, so there's always a hum in the air. The waterfalls are flowing high, the birds are back, and the trees are blooming. The farmer's market is bustling, and there's a great blue heron fishing in the creek outside my front door. The students are getting ready to leave, and we grownups will have the place to ourselves for the summer, yeeha!

Our little town just got named as one of Kiplinger's Top Ten "Smart Places to Live," which makes me proud but causes an inward groan. After watching what happened in Seattle when everyone and their brother moved there (including me, but not my brother), I'm holding my breath and wondering how Ithaca will be transformed in the upcoming years. Ithaca as it is right now feels like Fremont (a formerly funky neighborhood in Seattle) did when I moved there in 1996. I remember that my beat-up 1970 Volvo fit right in there when I moved in, but by the time I left three years later, it stuck out like a sore thumb amongst the shiny new cars of my upwardly mobile neighbors (this might have had something to do with the fact that the Husband had sawed the Volvo's roof off and painted the car purple). Don't get me wrong, I'm all for progress—Fremont looked gorgeous when I zoomed through there on my way to a wedding last summer—and I love watching my property value go up as I sit idly by, but small-town character is so fragile. I hope the local economy and housing market can absorb the influx of "new folks" we're currently experiencing-of which I am one, of course-without forcing the local color out.

Well that's the dispatch from Central New York, folks. I hope all is well wherever you are—keep on keeping on.